The object of this study will be to trace the early history of Russian medicine from Scythian times down to the mid-fourteenth century. Among the major topics to be explored will be the following: primitive folk medicine (including witchcraft both in its native Russian setting and in the broader context of the West European witch craze), plaques and other visitations, monastic medicine, the sauna (bania) as therapeutic agent, foreign influences on Russian medicine, mental illness and its treatment, early Russian drugs and samples. The study will hopefully shed new light both on the social and cultural history of medieval Russia as well as its early medical history. With the exception of several specialized articles on the Black Death, no such study of early Russian medicine exists in English. Most of the research can be carried out at the following U.S. sites: the National Library of Medicine, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library (Slavonic Division). In addition, some of the research will have to be done abroad. Major nineteenth-century scientific seriels as well as other rare items can be found at the University of Helsinki Library (one of five major depository libraries of the Russian Empire to 1917). Two major libraries and one museum in Leningrad contain a number of medieval medical manuscripts (illustrated and/or illuminated) as well as icons depicting plaques and visitations. This valuable "visual" source material will have to be tapped in Leningrad.